


happiness

by onthighsbelongtotaemin



Category: SHINee
Genre: Best Friends, Character Death, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, Death, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Love, Mental Health Issues, Original Character Death(s), Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 03:37:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8828836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onthighsbelongtotaemin/pseuds/onthighsbelongtotaemin
Summary: taeyeon learns that life isn’t fair





	

taeyeon had known eunsook all her life & eunsook had known taeyeon most of hers.  they were each other’s delight, holding hands & braiding hair, giggling behind palms at jokes no one else understood.  soul mates, in a sense, their lives interwoven & their hearts bound together in the way that children love.

when they are twelve & thirteen, they trick a guard into believing that they are stealing from a department store, escaping from the incensed patron to the roof of the building.  they laugh, breathless, their faces flushed & their eyes bright. then, as though pulled by a magnetic force between them, they lean forward & press their lips together, each other’s first kiss.  a gentle kiss that was in every way perfect as taeyeon felt eunsook caress her face. and then it was over.  they lean back, smiling, & taeyeon reaches out her hand that eunsook takes happily, lacing their fingers & swinging their arms as they make their way back down through the building, onto the street, heading towards taeyeon’s house, holding hands the entire way.  

when they are fourteen & fifteen taeyeon notices a change in eunsook.  she doesn’t smile as bright, doesn’t laugh as freely, takes taeyeon’s hand but doesn’t offer her own.  she’s slipping away so taeyeon holds tight, lacing their fingers & refusing to let go. maybe it’s because she broke up with jonghyun.  maybe it’s because she’s in love with minho.  maybe it’s because they’re teenagers & the adults are right & everything is more dramatic now that it ever was or will be.  she grips her best friend’s hand & rests her head on her shoulder, hoping.

when they are fifteen & sixteen taeyeon falls in love with eunsook’s twin brother.  he’s everything eunsook is & was but her heart skips when he smiles.  jinki is handsome & silly, pretending to fall just to get a laugh, eyes lighting up when he sees her smile.  it’s furtive & forbidden, a true romeo & juliet because their parents despise each other & stay civil only because their grandmothers are friends & still alive.  they will hate that their children have found happiness in each other’s arms.  but their grandmothers approve whole-heartedly.  and that is more than enough.  eunsook is as happy as she can be, wrapped in her oversized sweaters & baggy pants, a half-hearted smile on her face.  taeyeon wishes she could share her joy with eunsook because she thinks eunsook needs it more than she does.

when they are sixteen & seventeen taeyeon holds eunsook’s fingers in her own, curling them underneath.  the hospital is loud & quiet at the same time, smells of death & life.  for now, eunsook has her own bed but that may not always be the case.  and she won’t be here long; they’re coming to take her away.

taeyeon had been the one to find her.  she hadn’t seen eunsook in three days & she’d stopped replying to taeyeon’s texts last night.  she’d knocked on her best friend’s door & been met with eunsook’s father & the immediate frown of disapproval when he saw who was on his porch.

_“are you here to visit my daughter or to fuck my son?”_

_she had swallowed, not wholly unexpecting vitriol, just not quite so graphic._

_“visit your daughter.”, she had said, keeping her voice & her gaze steady.  “i would never fuck your son under your roof.”  he had eyed her, his expression unreadable & for a moment she was certain that he would turn her away.  but then the briefest twinkle of amusement & resignation had passed through his eyes & he opened the door, even holding it until she got inside, saying, “she’s upstairs.”  taeyeon was halfway up when she heard him mutter, “and so is my son.”_

_she had passed jinki’s room where he sat on his bed doing homework.  she had leaned in his doorway to tell him, “i think your dad is warming up to me.”  taeyeon blew him a kiss, not willing to push her luck any further.  she had turned toward eunsook’s room where she found the door not only closed but locked.  she had her own key, but she didn’t want to walk in without giving eunsook a chance to respond.  knocking, she called out for her best friend but received no reply.  she tried again, her voice a little louder & a little more desperate because eunsook never locked her door & she hadn’t heard from her in nearly a day & she had been so, so sad.  getting a bit hysterical, called one more time, her calls bringing jinki out of his room to see what was going on as she fumbled for her own key, slipping it into the lock, hoping desperately that her friend had dozed off & didn’t hear her calling._

_what she found was eunsook lying at the foot of her bed, the window open, the lights off, the fan blowing, & eunsook’s wrists bleeding onto the floor, her eyes shut & her breathing shallow.  she ran into the room, shaking eunsook & begging her to wake up.  pulling eunsook to the floor, she grabbed the bleeding wrists & pushed them above the girl’s head, pinning them to the bed as she ripped her shirt off, using it as a haphazard tourniquet until help could arrive, praying for time._

eunsook’s awake but only barely, & she’s watching taeyeon watch their fingers.

“do you want to know why?”

“do you want me to know why?”

“no.”, she whispered.  “no.”

“then don’t tell me.”

“what about these?”, she asked, looking down, moving her wrists slightly.  taeyeon leaned over & kissed each bandage softly.

“these are memories.  a moment in time.”  she moved her chair up & hugged eunsook’s arm.  

taeyeon is eighteen & eunsook is gone.  she left a note & a recording, her voice singing all of taeyeon’s favorite songs.  too much darkness in her mind, she wrote, & there was not enough light in the world to break through.  her love she left taeyeon, & her hope for a bright future.  it broke taeyeon’s heart because eunsook sounded so calm, so at peace, herself again.  and no matter what eunsook’s handwriting said, it felt like her fault.  why had she been given joy & eunsook given sorrow?

it was the first time she truly understood that life isn’t fair.

taeyeon is twenty & jinki is twenty-one & they are getting married.  their parents are civil because they love their children & because one of them cannot fathom hating the other when they have suffered such excruciating loss. and the other cannot bring it in their hearts to hate when they still mourn.

taeyeon wears a locket with a picture of them as girls, when they were twelve & thirteen & life was a joke & they were each other’s best friends, everyone else excluded from their magical world.  

she twists it in her fingers & hopes that eunsook is happy.


End file.
